A “PETTY ACCUSATION.”
This particular table is, therefore, hopelessly wrong, and is certainly valueless for any purpose of destructive criticism. It is on this page that the correspondent brings against me a petty accusation of which he should have been ashamed. He says that I have “skilfully conveyed a false impression” by giving certain German figures in hundredweights and English figures in tons. Surely he had the wit to see that I was merely transcribing figures without stopping to translate them; and it is difficult to imagine he could think I was so witless as to adopt a silly sleight-of-hand trick such as that of which he accuses me, a trick which would not deceive a child in the lowest standard of a Board school.